151–160 of 292 posts
As if there wasn't enough inequality in the world, now the rich will be able to afford to make their offspring genetically superior to everyone else's. Have fun with a 1% that are literally overlords.
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People refusing genetic modifications to remove risks of birth defects are more harmful than antivaxxers.
No. Birth defects aren't contagious and are not often fatal. Also -- where do you draw the line between "defect" and "cosmetic enhancement"? It will become a race to the bottom.
Well, not immediately fatal, anyway. What if a gene modification is developed that halves the rate of aging? Is it a birth defect to have a maximum life expectancy of only 120 years instead of 200 years?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People refusing genetic modifications to remove risks of birth defects are more harmful than antivaxxers.
No. Birth defects aren't contagious and are not often fatal. Also -- where do you draw the line between "defect" and "cosmetic enhancement"? It will become a race to the bottom.
I realize that scientific consensus is that gene editing should not be permitted to enhance human performance - be it mental or physical. But if one nation ignores this consensus, and starts producing "super humans" wouldn't other nations be compelled to follow? Otherwise, over time, wouldn't their citizens, and their nation, slowly fall behind as a country of power and status? Just a thought.
My understanding is that China has been doing this for years. * https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838
Wow, that's a huge deal if it's accurate. (I don't know much about the science involved so I can't judge whether it is.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Birth defects aren't contagious and are not often fatal. Also -- where do you draw the line between "defect" and "cosmetic enhancement"? It will become a race to the bottom.
How would genetic editing be a race to the bottom? If anything it would be a race to the top. If every generation got smarter, healthier and more attractive thanks to procedures like this humanity would be better for it. This would probably be true even if only a minority of people can afford it. If we had orders of magnitues more of genius level intellects pushing the boundaries of technology and science, humanity w…
In my class just Monday, we watched a film titled Gattaca, which tells the story of a society fueled by eugenics, where most births are in-vitro modified babies, and there is clear discrimination against those with "imperfect" genes. It's crazy how close these things are to reality.
I was never a big fiction reader but I can't get enough of these books... Jehoshaphat!
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>Our rapidly growing species has only accumulated mutations that don't cause us to die Hygiene, nutrition and medicine (all good things!) also cause us to remain alive where previously natural selection would not have favoured those bearing too great a mutational load. I doubt that existing mutations have been fully 'tested'. We know that the majority of mutations are harmful and that the brain is far from fully-deve…
I don't think you can remove a discussion about changes in allele frequencies from environments. Thus, making 'other things being equal' is not a reasonable premise from which to discuss evolution. I do see the argument you are espousing but I would only suggest that you consider the broader context of what happens when new species arise. I suspect you care more about the elimination of alleles (which is surprisingly…
(1) humans have universal intelligence which gives us the ability to adapt to any environment, (2) human evolution is now swamped by the evolution of memes, not genes. We now decide what to do (including whether to speciate or not)
A more realistic analogy from the animal kingdom would be something like the case of farmed salmon which within a very few generations are less healthy than wild salmon. Also the famous 'mouse utopia' experiment. Both situations where the environment has been artificially manipulated by (human) ideas, just as our present environment is. Mutational loading is one explanation for the results.
So have you considered the issue of mutational load: what's the greatest load we can sustain and what's its present level? Is it responsible, for example, for the declining birth rates in the West or is the explanation for that purely sociological?
I would like to know the answers. However I presume that we'll start by using CRISPR or similar tech to eliminate known genetic diseases like Huntington's and Tay-Sachs. From that precedent should follow the identification and elimination of new and more silent genetic abnormalities. Which is reassuring.
What concerns me in the long term is that gene editing will cause human genomes to converge to a single gold standard with proven mental and physical benefits, thereby reducing our species' genetic diversity and leaving us more vulnerable to a mass extinction event. A "zero day exploit" that everyone missed in the popular new cancer-fighting edit.